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See, this is where I start to clutch at my sides and rock back and forward moaning softly to myself. Blizzard’s class designers clearly have no clue what they’re trying to achieve or how they’re going to do it.

“Part of what pegged the Mage down a notch was Seed of Corruption, which ended up being better than we anticipated.”

Well.. uhh.. change it maybe? You can do that you know? Don’t these guys test anything? It’s just mathematics. If the guys at Elitist Jerks can model this stuff months before it’s released and accurately show how stuff will scale into the endgame and compare against abilities of other classes, why can’t Blizzard? I’m not even going to get into the whole “damage tax” shambles.

Aaargh! It just scares me that these clowns are responsible for the destiny of the class I love.

I really don’t see Fire as being too much of a problem. If anything, it’s more of a “don’t fix what ain’t broken.” Fire was already the premiere raiding spec in BC, so the design team is trying to get the other specs to catch up before making improvements to Fire DPS talents. When they’re done incorporating AoE into Fire (which btw, is quite pathetic IMO compared to Arcane and Frost), all three trees should be characteristic for their own methods of hitting a bunch of mobs at once, and at the same time putting up respectable DPS during boss fights.

I’m inclined to broadly agree with the general thrust of your argument there, it’s just Blizzard’s design process that makes we want to scream. Those blue posts are littered with “Gee, we didn’t see that one coming” remarks from the class designers. How can they not? Everyone else with even a passing interest in the Mage class did, and posted at length about it on both official and unnoficial forums, blogs… you name it. How can it be remotely possible that these clowns don’t understand the implications of the changes they’re making if they’re not modelling them?

I seriously believe that they are just making changes, putting them on test and waiting to see what happens with no actual modelling done beforehand. I do not believe the Mage Community Manager is doing their job and reporting issues back to the designers, or the designers are not paying any attention to the CM. There is just too much “Whoops, didn’t think that would happen” going on from the designers for anything else to make sense. I mean remember the damage tax? “We think mages are going to do too much dps so we’re going nerf your dps by 10%” You think? I’d feel a lot better if you knew, rather than thought. Months later, months after it was obvious to everyone that mages weren’t doing too much dps, quite the opposite in fact: “Oh, wow. Er, ok mages aren’t doing too much dps after all. Gee, didn’t expect that. Damage tax removed.”

It’s this whole “Whoah, where did that one come from?” from the designers that makes me weep.